Name: What is Daylight Saving Time? | CNBC Explains
Uploaded: 2021-03-27T19:55:08.000Z
Duration: 6 min 13 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

For more than half the year, this sundial doesn't show the right time.

Transition words & phrases

That's because in many nations,  the clocks spring forward by one

hour from the end of March to the end of October.

It's called daylight saving time,  and it affects more

than one billion people.  But recently, several nations

have proposed scrapping it, including the European Union. 

So how did seasonal clock changes come about, 

with the sun. For example, midday is roughly when the

sun is highest in the sky, with equal amounts of daylight

either side. But for about 70 countries around the world,

this isn't the case for roughly  half the year because of daylight

saving time, which is the method of moving clocks forward during

warmer months so that darkness falls at a later time.

hemisphere set their clocks ahead by one hour to push

sunsets later in the evenings and sunrises

later in the mornings.  Then, in late October, 

they are wound back by an hour, subtracting an hour of daylight

from the evening and making  the early mornings brighter. 

In the southern hemisphere,  the reverse occurs, with their 

daylight saving time taking place during their summers. 

 The idea of daylight saving was originally proposed by

New Zealander George Hudson in 1895. He was a scientist

studying insects and wanted  to take advantage of the

extra daylight in the summer to hunt for bugs. 

 The idea didn't catch on at the time, but at

the start of the 20th  century, a successful

British builder called  William Willett published

a pamphlet called, 'The waste of daylight.' 

Willett proposed moving the clocks forward by 80 minutes

His campaign even gained the support of Winston 

Churchill, but Willett  died in 1915 before

 William Willett was a keen golfer and wasn't a fan of

He argued that several hours of sun were being

wasted while we slept and that we should use more

of it, along with the nice summer weather, to pursue

leisure activities after work.  However, when daylight

 In 1916, Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire 

were the first countries to  implement daylight saving 

during the first world war.  The aim was that by adjusting 

the clocks forward,  less electricity would

be used for lighting, thereby  conserving coal which could

 The U.K. followed suit a month later while the

U.S. adopted it in 1918, which was claimed to

have saved the United  States $2 million in gas 

bills at the time, or around  $33 million when

Turning on the lights an hour later may have saved 

but industrialization and  technological advances 

mean that lighting  is a smaller part

 A 2017 study found that moving an hour of daylight

to the evening reduced electricity usage by an

average of just 0.34%.  Places further from the

equator, which experience  the biggest change in 

daylight, were more likely to save energy 

with daylight saving.  But this was offset by 

Longer sunlit evenings  in hot countries usually 

result in more time spent indoors, pushing up 

electricity consumption  due to the need for air

 The use of daylight saving continues to split opinion. 

Some countries are even  divided about the annual

  In the U.S., Hawaii and Arizona — states that

already get a lot of sunshine — are the

only two that haven't adopted daylight saving. 

Within Arizona, however,  it's even more confusing,

as there are territories and reservations which

There are also divides in  Australia, where three

out of the eight states have not adopted daylight 

saving; Brazil, where  daylight saving is only

used in the south of the country which lies

furthest from the equator;  and Canada, where the

province of Saskatchewan doesn't have seasonal

clock changes, unlike the rest of the country. 

 But the European Union is planning to keep things

simple by getting rid of daylight saving altogether. 

 In 2019, the European Parliament voted to scrap 

daylight saving time across all member states from

2021 following a poll showed EU residents 

However, supporters and critics of seasonal clock

changes are divided about its effects.  

 For instance, daylight saving reduces road

Subtitles ListPlay Video

What is Daylight Saving Time? | CNBC Explains

relevant

immediately

rid

consumption